The Poetry Archive

Amber 1:  Hello, I'm Amber, and in the programme today we hear about The PoetryArchive - a brilliant new website to stretch your listening skills! The site waslaunched at the end of last year at the British Library in London.
　　At www.poetryarchive.co.uk you'll find readings by contemporary English-language poets – like Wendy Cope and Seamus Heaney - and poets from thepast – like Siegfried Sassoon, who reads one of his haunting poems about theFirst World War.
　　Andrew Motion, the UK Poet Laureate, is one of the founders 2 of the project.
　　He'll be explaining why The Poetry Archive is such an exciting and useful on-line library.
　　So, what's special about listening to a poem read by the poet who wrote it?
　　Andrew Motion makes three points: He says it's fascinating to hear what apoet's voice sounds like. And it can help you to understand a poem. And thethird point? See if you can catch one, or both, of the expressions he uses todescribe how poems make sense.
　　He does speak very quickly but we'll repeat the extracts from his interview.
　　Andrew Motion'There is a level of fascination 3 about what people's voices are like, there's a level ofunderstanding that becomes available when you hear them aloud, and there is the absolutelyfundamental point that the sound-sense and page-sense can't be separated.'
　　Amber:  There is the important point that poems communicate through 'sound-sense'
　　(through rhythm and rhyme, for example) – and through what Andrew Motioncalls 'page-sense' – (the way the words are arranged on the page). Listen again.
　　Andrew Motion'There is a level of fascination about what people's voices are like, there's a level ofunderstanding that becomes available when you hear them aloud, and there is the absolutelyfundamental point that the sound-sense and page-sense can't be separated.'
　　Amber:  Sound-sense and page-sense - two useful compound words for describing howwe absorb the meaning of a poem. Sound-sense and page-sense.
　　Next, we asked Andrew Motion to talk about what you can do at The PoetryArchive beside listen to poems.
　　Andrew Motion'Well, it depends who you are. If you're a primary school child there is a dimension of the sitewhich is especially for you, there's a site for teachers, there's a site for secondary schoolchildren with a great deal of supplementary 4 material added to it – lesson plans, and adviceabout listening, and interviews with the poets (not all the poets, but some of the poets), and soon and so on. There's a mass of stuff there – I think if you laid it end to end it would be abouta sort-of 150 page book – but it's all good stuff!'
　　Amber:  So The Poetry Archive is really like lots of websites within one big website,and for students and teachers of English as a foreign or second language, thereshould be plenty of interesting material. What do you think would be useful foryou? Listen again.
　　Andrew Motion'Well, it depends who you are. If you're a primary school child there is a dimension of the sitewhich is especially for you, there's a site for teachers, there's a site for secondary schoolchildren with a great deal of supplementary material added to it – lesson plans, and adviceabout listening, and interviews with the poets (not all the poets, but some of the poets), and soon and so on. There's a mass of stuff there – I think if you laid it end to end it would be abouta sort-of 150 page book – but it's all good stuff!'
　　Amber:  To end our glimpse inside The Poetry Archive, Andrew Motion explains hishopes for the project. He says he wants it to work like a magnet, drawingpeople to listen to poetry, even if they don't know much about it – yet!
　　Andrew Motion'I hope it gathers together a lot of the important things that anybody interested in poetry -who already knows something about it - would find valuable, and also, of course, I hope it's amagnet for people who don't yet know very much about poems, or feel unconfident aboutpoems. I mean, I think it's an important thing.'
　　Amber:  So dive in to www.poetryarchive.co.uk.
　　Then if you don't know where to start, try searching for a poem by theme –here are a few of the subjects you can choose from: the sea, money, mothers,flowers, childhood, animals, ghosts, dreams …Happy listening.